On my recent trip to Europe, an amazing confluence of travel and technology made it a lot more fun. I travelled from Kathmandu to Kosovo via Abudhabi, Frankfurt and Vienna. Abudhabi and Vienna were uneventful and were only transit stops. Frankfurt, I had some work to finish off, so was a proper stop. That is where it was interesting.

For those of you who travel a bit more then usual, Dopplr.com is a site that I’ve been using for a while. I think I got an really early on invite to the site – and then have been using it. Nice thing is once i update my Dopplr account with my travel data, i can subscribe the feed to my calendar. Of course, like any web 2.0 application, you add friends and links and networks in Dopplr and then connect to it from Facebook. The Facebook linkage is fun. Dopplr, once you give it permission, will send nice updates to your Facebook wall with your travel plans and a map.

So, this trip to, my Facebook Wall was automatically updated that I was traveling to Frankfurt. A friend of mine, whom I haven’t seen for a few years was traveling from Vancouver to Cape Town – also through Frankfurt. Once in Frankfurt and on the Internet, he spotted that I would be in Frankfurt Airport as well and send me a message. I wasn’t in the Airport, but then got the message and then we meet up for beer and dinner at the Airport. How Cool.. !!

This is not the first or the last time I guess combination of different online social networks will help us socialize more, but do concede that I was amazed at the speed which this interaction took place.